Pages

Sunday, 18 October 2015

Invincible Iron Man #1 Review (Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez)

The new creative team of Brian Bendis and David Marquez means a new renumbering and, of course, a new armour - it’s the All-New (not really), All-Different (ditto) Invincible Iron Man (... yay, nothing's changed, same old safe old)!

So what's happening this time around? Not much! Well, Tony’s new armour is all of his armours - plus a new one with a weirdly bird-like helmet - all in one that handily fits into his watch! In this opening issue he goes on a date with a Sri Lankan biophysicist who claims to have a cure for the mutant gene (coughHouseofMcough) and Madame Masque is raiding various high security places for some reason. And then that last page.

The first scene is very cliched but I love Marquez’s design of Madame Masque, whose new mask looks incredible and shiny. Tony’s inner monologue when he’s in his workshop is pretty good though it feels like ideas floating around the writer’s room for Iron Man 4. It’s a little disappointing that the centrepiece of this opening issue is a rather ordinary dinner date between two geniuses talking about work. The comic’s missing some sizzle that Bendis should've brought instead of just soggy yapping.

Scattered throughout Tony's night out are some simply incredible pages of Masque escaping from places like the Japanese Stark Tower and Doom’s castle in Latveria - David Marquez definitely knows to bring the damn sizzle!

And that’s basically it. Not much of a story to go on except for that last page and, frankly, writers have used that guy for so many red herrings, I’m fully expecting that to not be who he says he is.

Invincible Iron Man #1 is an ok start. It’s got outstanding art and some decent bits of dialogue but nothing especially that exciting or fresh from Bendis - but then plot’s never been his strong suit. At any rate it feels far more readable than Kieron Gillen’s awful run on the character so who knows, maybe this will turn out to be one of the better additions to the Iron Man library - maybe? At any rate, I can definitely trade-wait this puppy instead of buying the monthlies.